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From: heavytull on 27 Jan 2008 17:17
I would like to know whether it is normal that ATI releases proprietary
drivers for linux that are quite a lot more buggy and a less fine than for
windows?

i've never seen any bug under windows, while the one for linux seems to be
even less reliable than the open source one.

the acceleration is really aweful in linux and why these drivers make the
backlight flashing twice at the launch of the X window?
this shortens the lifespan.

under windows and with the open sourc driver for linux the backlight is
switched off and switched on again only once at the start of the graphical
interface or X window.
From: Shadow_7 on 27 Jan 2008 19:56
> I would like to know whether it is normal that ATI releases proprietary
> drivers for linux that are quite a lot more buggy and a less fine than for
> windows?

They are buggy. But they are specifically designed for odd distros like
RedHat, and SuSE. Under debian, the one main issue I've had is that Mesa
OpenGL library overrides the ATI one. Even when building debs from
the ati installer, I still have to manually replace /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2
with the file from /usr/lib/fglrx/diversions/libGL.so.1.2.

dpkg-divert --list | grep -i "fglrx"

If you don't do this, then X uses the Mesa acceleration (software) to do
the rendering.


glxinfo | grep -i "direct"

Should show:

direct rendering: Yes


glxinfo | grep -i "^opengl"

Should show(or something like this):

OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon Xpress Series
OpenGL version string: 2.1.7170 Release

And NOT Mesa if you want DRI acceleration. And otherwise use the ATI
drivers, and not the mesa ones.


But I digress, they are buggy. Especially if you venture into things like
xinerama. The main bug of late is that the cursor gets a little whacked.
Unfortunately they are even buggier on newer versions of X. But seem a
lot more stable / usable on the older versions of X.

When I first started using the ATI drivers on my Radeon Xpress 200M 5595
(PCIE) it would only work in 24 bit colors. And is otherwise picky about
what options are in your xorg.conf. Which aticonfig is not very good at
modifying IMO. But better than nothing I guess.

With the radeon open source driver, I have more color modes and more
resolution modes available for use. Under the ATI driver, I'm quite
limited in those regards. Not that I've used the radeon driver lately.
The main issue I had with the radeon driver was that the 3D acceleration
was virtually non-existent. But it was nice to have more resolution modes
available so things didn't get so stretched out when Cntrl+Alt+[+]-ing
through the modes. This 1280x800 display is quite weird looking at some
of the traditional resolutions. Anyway enough rambling.

HTH
From: Rikishi 42 on 28 Jan 2008 03:57
On 2008-01-28, Shadow_7 <wwwShadow7(a)yaNOhoo.comNULL> wrote:

>> I would like to know whether it is normal that ATI releases proprietary
>> drivers for linux that are quite a lot more buggy and a less fine than for
>> windows?
>
> They are buggy. But they are specifically designed for odd distros like
> RedHat, and SuSE.
Odd distro's ?

Please...

> When I first started using the ATI drivers on my Radeon Xpress 200M 5595
> (PCIE) it would only work in 24 bit colors.
I see. You'd be the kin of person that find CD sound to low of quality, too?

> The main issue I had with the radeon driver was that the 3D acceleration
> was virtually non-existent. But it was nice to have more resolution modes
> available so things didn't get so stretched out when Cntrl+Alt+[+]-ing
> through the modes.
Out of sincere curiousity: do you change the resolution that often? Why?

--
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Douglas Adams
From: Rikishi 42 on 28 Jan 2008 03:52
On 2008-01-27, heavytull <heavytull(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to know whether it is normal that ATI releases proprietary
> drivers for linux that are quite a lot more buggy and a less fine than for
> windows?
Of course that's normal. Simple matter of numbers.
They have *much* more Windows users, so they'll get much more feedback and
bug reports.

> the acceleration is really aweful in linux and why these drivers make the
> backlight flashing twice at the launch of the X window?
> this shortens the lifespan.
Huh?
Worries about acceleration, I can understand.
But having a flash at the start of X. Why would you care about that, unless
you're starting and stopping X all the time?


--
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Douglas Adams
From: Shadow_7 on 28 Jan 2008 05:42
On Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:57:03 +0100, Rikishi 42 wrote:

> On 2008-01-28, Shadow_7 <wwwShadow7(a)yaNOhoo.comNULL> wrote:
>
>>> I would like to know whether it is normal that ATI releases proprietary
>>> drivers for linux that are quite a lot more buggy and a less fine than for
>>> windows?
>>
>> They are buggy. But they are specifically designed for odd distros like
>> RedHat, and SuSE.

> Odd distro's ?
>
> Please...

Yes, odd. As in the tldp.org need not apply. Since they've moved or
renamed things, or otherwise scripted them to death.


>> When I first started using the ATI drivers on my Radeon Xpress 200M
>> 5595 (PCIE) it would only work in 24 bit colors.

> I see. You'd be the kin of person that find CD sound to low of quality,
> too?

Actually I do find CD quality sound too low. But I'm a trombonist and
like my trombone to sound more like a trombone than a synthesizer. But in
term of video, I prefer 16 bit so I get better performance. I'm a little
color deficient so it's not like I'm gonna miss a few million colors that
the monitor couldn't accurately reproduce anyway.


>> The main issue I had with the radeon driver was that the 3D
>> acceleration was virtually non-existent. But it was nice to have more
>> resolution modes available so things didn't get so stretched out when
>> Cntrl+Alt+[+]-ing through the modes.

> Out of sincere curiousity: do you change the resolution that often? Why?

Because firefox doesn't come with a zoom feature (that I know of). So
when someone posts a fairly low res picture of themselves or some alumni,
I can Cntrl+Alt+[+] to zoom in on the pic. Otherwise I'm looking at
something the size of a postage stamp, or desktop icon. Using a change
in resolution to zoom is easier/quicker than having to save as and
open it in a picture viewer capable of zooming. Plus when I'm checking
email first thing in the morning and my eyes aren't quite focused yet,
it's nice to make the thing bigger without having the bring the lcd of the
laptop within 5"'s of my face. Or restart X with a different dpi setting.
And then there's pogo.com with their 640x### java applets, that are just
to small to play well without zooming in. And minesweeper in expert mode
that suffers a similar fate.

Since you asked.
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